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"Because," he replied, "I have been studying
these forty years, and I find that it has been so much time lost...I believe
that I am composed of matter, but I have never been able to satisfy myself what
it is that produces thought. I am even ignorant whether my understanding is a
simple faculty like that of walking or digesting, or if I think with my head in
the same manner as I take hold of a thing with my hands...I talk a great deal,
and when I have done speaking I remain confounded and ashamed of what I have
said."

The same day I had a conversation with an old woman, his
neighbor. I asked her if she had ever been unhappy for not understanding how
her soul was made? She did not even comprehend my question. She had not, for
the briefest moment in her life, had a thought about these subjects with which
the good Brahmin had so tormented himself. She believed in the bottom of her
heart in the metamorphoses of Vishnu, and provided she could get some of the
sacred water of the Ganges in which to make her ablutions, she thought herself
the happiest of women. Struck with the happiness of this poor creature, I
returned to my philosopher, whom I thus addressed:

"Are you not ashamed to be thus miserable when, not
fifty yards from you, there is an old automaton who thinks of nothing and lives
contented?"

"You are right," he replied. "I have said to
myself a thousand times that I should be happy if I were but as ignorant as my
old neighbor; and yet it is a happiness which I do not desire."

This reply of the Brahmin made a greater impression on me
than anything that had passed.

Excerpt taken from a book which, I am more than delighted for that, have opened the heavy doors of dark fathomless well of philosophy for me. The book is a fun ride explaining with exceptional clarity and a skilled writer's prose gems like Spinoza, Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Greek dudes (and other significant ones) playing their genius minds with ever confusing metaphysics, unsolvable ontology, delusional epistemology, society, morality, truth, reason, belief, beauty, instincts and the "lovely elusive God". The greatest success of the book is that amidst this chaos of thoughts and ideologies, it fathers sheer fondness for philosophical spaghetti and unleashes the hunger within for true wisdom. The book is called as The Story of Philosophy by Will Durant.